the agenda | a&e | feature | the naked city food
foodanddrink
feedingfrenzy By Carly Szkaradnik
MICHAEL PERSICO
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a.bar | In addition to the full-service restaurant a.kitchen, the AKA hotel on Rittenhouse Square has expanded its amenities to include a super-sleek bar in the former Kiehl’s space. With no hot kitchen on premises, the menu centers around small plates and is decidedly seafood-heavy, with the main attraction being a well-appointed raw bar. The wine list, courtesy of sommelier Tim Kweeder (also the architect of a.kitchen’s stellar roster), focuses on artisanal natural wines — and immediately ranks as one of the best in the city. Open daily, 3 p.m.-midnight, 135 S. 18th St., 215-825-7000, stayaka.com.
ROUNDABOUT: Beef jerky and jasmine-rice sausages are wrapped with romaine, chile and lime in Ratchada’s Thai sampler.
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NEAL SANTOS
Garage | The latest opening from Jason Evenchik (Growlers, Vintage) celebrates beer in cans and boardwalk vibes in the shell of a former body shop. The space has been kitted out with skeeball, pinball and pool tables (yes, the games spit out redeemable tickets) and an indoor lunch cart that will host a rotating cast of cooks from some of the city’s best-known food trucks. There’s also a generous “BYO cheesesteak” food policy, and if the list of cans numbering in the hundreds doesn’t do it for you, the bar offers a few drafts and a minimalist approach to wine — you want red or white? Open daily, 5 p.m.-2 a.m., 1231 E. Passyunk Ave., 215-278-2429. Serpico | Any time a decorated New York chef moves to Philly, you can expect a good dose of breathless anticipation. When word got out that the newest arrival was the chef who opened Momofuku Ko with David Chang, the Philly food scene was left gasping for air. After months spent ducking most of the hype, Peter Serpico opened the doors last month. Though undoubtedly stylish, the neighborhood-joint vibe comes through with chalkboard menus and bar seating overlooking an open kitchen. The opening menu includes plenty of approachable tastes like hand-torn pastas and lamb ribs, though not without some twists (try not to look surprised when your foie hits the table in powder form). Open Sun.-Thu., 5-11 p.m., Fri.-Sat., 5 p.m.-midnight, 604 South St., 215-925-3001, serpicoonsouth.com. Got A Tip? Please send restaurant news to restaurants@ citypaper.net or call 215-735-8444, ext. 207.
[ review ]
HIERARCHY OF HOT Ratchada brings together the big flavors of Thailand and Laos. By Adam Erace RATCHADA | 1117 S. 11th St., 215-467-1546, ratchadatlc.com. Hours: Mon.-Thu., 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sun., 2-9:30 p.m. Appetizers, $4.95-$13.95; entrees, $9.95-$22.95; desserts, $5.95-$6.95.
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parade of carved elephants still marches trunk-to-tail inside the front door. Traditional dance headdresses, gilded and jeweled and glittering in their multitude of spires, still appoint the dark wooden walls. The square, open dining room still looks like the habitat of some colonial art collector. The Thai sampler is still on the menu and served in the same elegant blue-and-white More on: platter with different compartments cupping crispy spring rolls the size of Kit Kats, two types of dumplings, a chicken-peanut mix rolled like saltwater taffy in clear rice-paper crepes, and luminous papaya salad shot through with just the right amount of fish sauce. Except for the new name, illuminated in a red halo above the door, little seems to have changed at 1117 S. 11th Street. One day in December, what was once Cafe de Laos, a long-running outpost of Thai and Lao cooking on Vietnamese-dense Washington Avenue, became Ratchada when two former servers, Tom Suparsi and Jib
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Jongboon, took over. The staff is much the same at Ratchada, which is named for a Bangkok neighborhood, and they’ll still nod along to your “hot” requests but order you what they think is best anyway, like a bunch of overprotective moms. “I think I remember you from Cafe de Laos,” one particularly pleasant server said to me as he punched “medium” on the computer for the heat level of my take-out curry. Apparently not well enough. You’ve still got to press these well-intentioned profilers a bit, to assuage their fears that you’re not going to ship your Massaman or jungle curry back to the kitchen because you can’t handle its faceincinerating spice. I can’t blame them for being overcautious. I’m sure in the past they’ve been plenty burned by returns. “Hot” is still a three-tiered hierarchy: There’s hot, very hot and Thai hot. One time during the Cafe de Laos era, I insisted on Thaihot red curry, and to this day, it’s the spiciest bowl of food I’ve ever consumed, even hotter than anything I ate MORE FOOD AND in Thailand. Halfway through the dish, DRINK COVERAGE I’d taken on the look of a rubella victim: AT C I T Y P A P E R . N E T / sweaty, ashen and halfway delirious. M E A LT I C K E T. So now I stick to “very hot,” and that worked just fine in the som tom centerpiece of the Thai sampler, the heat of the crushed red chilies colliding with the sweet of palm sugar, sour of lime juice and salty of fish sauce and peanuts in the chaotic harmony that underscores Thai cooking. They flamed the tom zap, the lemony soup from the north poured over chopped spare ribs that separated from their bones like bananas from their peels, and the tom kha, the quenching coconut soup >>> continued on page 36